Month: February 2016

Russell Todd Crawford earned a PhD in psychology with an emphasis in cognition and maintains a private practice in Virginia Beach, Virginia, for individuals, couples, and families. Russell Todd Crawford is a member of various professional organizations, including the American Counseling Association, the National Board for Certified Counselors, and the American Psychological Association (APA).

The American Psychological Association hosts a State Leadership Conference in Washington, D.C., each spring. The conference is attended by APA staff, elected leaders, and volunteers from the association’s 60 state and provincial offices and regularly attracts some 500 attendees, including graduate students and new professionals. The State Leadership Conference is known as an advocacy event as well as for its leadership development and training.

Each conference focuses on a specific theme and offers sessions designed to support and improve attendees’ psychology practices. In 2015, the 32nd State Leadership Conference promoted a theme of “Practice Innovation,” where advances in integrated care, Medicare reimbursement, and insurance were considered and discussed. The topics, aimed at enabling psychologists to find fulfillment and self-direction in their practice, included presentations on psychologists and political action and an orientation for psychologists who had recently received their degrees.

Dr. Russell Todd Crawford, himself a survivor of depression and anxiety, emphasizes a compassionate approach to psychotherapy. Based in Virginia Beach, Russell Todd Crawford has extensive experience in treating complex issues such as self-injury and panic disorder.

Panic attacks and phobias are prevalent in U.S. society, with some 29 percent of adults experiencing them over the course of a lifetime. At the center of these disorders is emotional memory, which encompasses the full range of experiences and associated stimuli, and the resulting emotional responses.

Past embarrassment in public situations may result in social phobia, while an assault can lead to intense fear of walking along a darkened street. The common thread is that situations previously thought of as harmless are now linked with a sense of dread.

Therapeutic approaches to phobias currently involve exposure therapy, through which the feared situation or object is presented again and again, such that more recent, safe memories supplant the frightening memory. This effectively suppresses the fear, although new traumatizing events can reawaken the negative memory.

As highlighted in a New York Times’ article, recent research focuses on the use of the drug propranolol. This seems to inhibit the effects on the brain of norepinephrine, which plays a role in the way a memory is put back in storage after it is retrieved, and may present a way of permanently eliminating phobias.